An Engraving
by DressagePunk
Summary: She carved his name on the bullet so everyone would know he was the last thing to go through her head. One Shot for the Suicide Competition on HPFC.


Cho sat on the stained bar stool in a Muggle bar, the dark atmosphere reminded her of a dungeon. Empty cocktail glasses were scattered in front of her, different shapes and sizes. All with the sticky alcoholic residue at the bottom. The next glass, a highball, hit the bar with a thud, as the sting of alcohol faded down her throat.

She raised a hand at the bartender, who pointedly ignored her. He didn't care for her presence. No one wanted her around, not that way she was now. Even in this place, she looked low. A seemingly crazy alcoholic dressed in odd tattered robes.

Cho was depressed. She had been for a while. But only recently had it actually started to slowly kill her. Well physically anyway, her psyche had started to kill her from the moment Potter brought Cedric's body back. From the moment she say him, she wouldn't ever be the same, how could she, everything she valued was dead.

Cho loved Cedric, really loved him. He was her one and only. The only one who could make her whole. People joke about having better halves but Cedric was more like Cho's better three quarters.

They'd been friends since Cho's second year; he'd taken a liking to her. Always there for helping with Potions and Herbology, Not that she really needed it. She was a Ravenclaw after all. But the company and his presence made her thrive. Thrive every time his hand brushed hers, and made her heart skip a beat every time he swept hair from her face.

Cho thought she could survive without him, she thought he'd be proud that she had survived. Hogwarts and Dumbledore's Army served as a distraction, but not a good one. Her emotions still ran everything. She cried everywhere. She kept hoping it would dissipate in time. It didn't.

One night, as Cho laid in her four poster bed, crying. She reached for the abused photographs under her pillow. The photographs that had worn corners, tear stains and running colors; for the most loved toys aren't the ones kept in perfect condition but the ones that were imperfect from human contact.

That weekend in Hogsmeade, at the end of her fourth year. A huge group of Hogwarts students, all joyful and buzzed, surrounding a table at the Three Broomsticks. Cedric had thrown his arm around Cho's shoulders. Someone had snapped a picture, the perfect picture in her opinion. His smile was almost as big as hers. She loved this picture, she loved this piece of colored paper because she couldn't have him anymore.

That was the first day they kissed, playing truth or dare. Cedric's friend Todd dared Cedric to kiss the most beautiful girl in the pub. Cho had got a sick feeling in her stomach as he quickly glanced around the pub, but as quick as that glance was, he just as quickly moved his lips to meet her's. His lips moved again, begging for some kind of reciprocation on her part.

It took her what seemed like an hour to press her lips back into his. Soon enough his tongue was questionably begging entrance into her mouth, she parted her lips and as his soft tongue slid into her mouth, Todd suddenly 'ahhhh-emmmmhhheddd', effectively separating them.

She was blushing furiously but Cedric just lazily threw his arm around her. The dares seemed to cease after that and soon after they separated to walk back to the castle with their respective houses.

Cho screamed and cackled all the way back to the castle. She'd raved about the kiss for days. Yet she'd avoided him, ignored his glances at meals, walked away from his normal routes, she was afraid it meant more to her than it meant to him.

Cho's attention was quickly drawn back to her current depressing state, when the bartender slammed a martini glass down in front of her.

"Sex with an Alligator."

"Excuse me?"

"On the house" he motioned to the glass, and Cho let her eyes swirl around the green murky liquor.

This is what her life had become reduced too. Sex with a Bloody Alligator.

Gone were the perfect times, where trivial worries were merely retarded fears. She hadn't even worked up the courage to see him before they were trained back to London. She had wasted an entire summer not being with him because of irrational fears. Stupid girly emotions.

She twirled the glass, slightly mixing the liquors, taking a sip, she almost threw up. It tasted gross. Like swamp water. But having quickly downed it, helped, numb was good. Numb was great, it was the only escape. Not a complete escape, though, she'd lost her magic.

She tried to blame the alcohol, but honestly, she thought it was the depression. Cho thought you'd have to have some level of happiness to do magic. The same reason why you couldn't produce a Patronus Charm in the presence of a dementer. She knew she was slowly killing herself, and the memories only made it worse. Especially the memories that made him seem real.

Like the memory of the first time he told her he loved her. Cedric Diggory told Cho Change he loved her.

Cho had spent hours dressing for the Yule Ball. Cedric had asked her when they first announced it. It seemed the next step, considering when they saw each other on the train, they'd literally snogged the whole way to school.

But walking down to Cedric, he made me feel like the only one in the room. Calming her nerves about dancing first. After all he was the Hogwarts Champion. Well one of them. And just before the song ended he whispered into her ear, "I love you, Cho."

"I love you too, Ced."

That was the last perfect day of her life. They danced until Cho couldn't stand, and when the night was eventually over. Cedric made a production of forcefully carrying her up to the Ravenclaw tower, after she'd made the "can't walk" comment.

He gave her a quick kiss goodnight and left. Cho had fallen asleep on a couch in the common room between the emotional overload and the physical exhaustion.

Cho'd ordered another drink, just a whiskey on the rocks. The bartender didn't really like that she'd asked for firewhisky. He thought she was being a smart ass. But it was just showing the final remainders of the witch left in her.

No distraction in the world could keep it at bay. No healer at Saint Mungo's, no Madame Pomfrey could fix the pain. Only the numbness that came with alcohol. She'd tried once, another method, Cho figured love had made her depressed. So she figured love could make her happy again.

She tried to give Harry a chance, but really he wasn't Cedric. He wasn't built like a Quidditch player. He wasn't fiercely loyal to her, only to the skank that he hung out with, Hermione. And he certainly didn't make promises of the future to her like Cedric.

Harry had screwed up with every chance she'd given him. Besides he always kept a ridiculous amount of physical space between them. Cedric was always so close. Harry had just increased the pain. If the boy who lived, the one wizard more famous than any other couldn't make her feel love, she was doomed.

Doomed forever. But she'd accepted her fate. Well, accepted trying to drown herself in hard liquor.

That's when the water works hit. When she thought about the second challenge. He'd pulled her out of the water; she'd been perpetually locked in her mind for 12 or so hours. Thinking about how she was there because he cared for her more than anyone else. More than anything else.

Later her friends would swear he'd kissed every square inch of her. She knew he had, and that night, in the prefects lounge, well...

That night he snuck out with her, and once they reached the lounge, all words seemed to fly out the window.

Kissing softly, not like some of their rather heavy snogging sessions in between classes, and slowly moving towards the ottoman in the center of the room. It was enlarged to the size of a large round bed.

Cedric had cradled her head as he gently laid them down. Slowly off came clothing, and in the same slow fashion he pushed into her. She had bit her lip, and slightly whimpered in pain. It hurt her. He stopped and concern swept across his flawless features. She had shaken her head, forcing herself to erase any signs of pain.

As it progressed the pain subsided, replaced by small feeling of pleasure. She relaxed, but the words of love he continued to whisper into her ear made everything better. This was the way he had physically shown her his love, yet the verbal ways that came with it, doubled its effectiveness.

Their physical time together, got better and better; until right before the third challenge. The last time was the night before the final challenge. It was also the first time they actually slept like actual slumber together. As well as the last. And that was when he promised to marry her and make her his forever.

And that, that was when she drained the last of the whiskey, threw crumbled Muggle money down on the bar and walked out.

Tears streamed down her sunken cheeks, walking into the raining street, she walked with a new purpose to her apartment a few blocks away. Entering the equally dungeon like apartments, she grabbed her wand off the kitchen table. She needed a spell, a simple one, maybe something from first year.

She remembered it, '_sliencio_'. She said the spell at the window where rain was pounding heavily. It didn't work. She swished and flicked her wand, and said a levitation spell. It didn't work, on even the plain paper. It was official; her love had cost her, her magic. And her depression would soon take everything. She couldn't even kill herself with magic.

The end of the war was supposed bring happiness, but instead it was just the constant depression. Because Voldemort was defeat-able, and Cedric wasn't able to do it.

Cedric, that's what it said. Cedric. That's the only think she ever thought about.

Cedric.

And that's why the day before she had carved his name into the silver bullet that was now loaded into the gun in her hand.

She carved his name on the bullet so everyone would know he was the last thing to go through her head.

When the daily prophet printed a story the next day, they didn't mention the engraving. No one knew it was him that drove her too it. Everyone saw a substance addicted witch. Not the lover, she wanted to leave the world as.

AN: I know it's kind of dark. But please review I love them :)


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